You've been gone a while
by Xelly-chan
Summary: 'He wants to wrap his hands around the clock and turn it back. Move the bladed hands of time to the beginning.' Short future ficlet. Character could be Trunks or Gohan. Up to reader. Better version on AO3.


There's no where to go. There hasnt been anywhere to go for years now, since before most of the few children surviving have been born.

The earth is made up of empty miles of barren land and spotted with devastation and ruins. It's the world he knows.

There are trees still, and people too. Not exactly rare, though they are broken, constantly being uprooted, but there. It pulses like a heartbeat. People living. People surviving.

He can feel it deep in his bones, awful and wonderful and painful. It bleeds into each minute, each second, humanity goes on. He can feel it. Time, precarious and hinging on so much, is all they have. Time is life.

Time is killing them.

He wants to wrap his hands around the clock and turn it back. Move the bladed hands of time to the beginning. Just a moment ago. He wishes he was a child again. He thinks he could never grow up fast enough.

Someone once told him that it hurt to be alive. It's how he knows the androids aren't really alive. They don't hurt. They don't ache. Anger, all consuming and terrible, doesn't leave them with an empty gaping pit in their core.

They'll never look up at the sky and wonder how it's still blue.

The earth is dry under his fingers. Gritty and crunching under the sole of his boots. The area is partched, it saps at him. His skin feels hot, pulled taught over muscle and sinew. His lips are cracked, bloody tasting.

Not for the first time does he wonder if things and people can be reborn. The Dragon Balls are gone, but who is to say rebirth won't happen. Can't happen.

His heart catches in his throat.

Blood has dried tacky over the scraps of his torn shirt, gluing it to his skin. In the back of his mind, curled in the Pandora's box of pain and rage and despair, is something that's a lot like what he could call hope. Except it's almost too risky to call it that.

The word is thorny and bittersweet on his tongue, scrapping itself raw out of his mouth. Or maybe that's just how hope is.

A wiry bitey little thing that crawls around half determined and half desperate until its little body is broken all over again. Shattered.

Maybe its a lie. Hope could be a lie. After so long, what's he got left to cling to. His fingers feel like they've been peeled to the bone. The bones made dirty with it, no longer white and pristine.

He wonders if there's anyway to tell the difference between losing something and sacrificing it. He wonders when the line started to blur. Wasn't he a child once?how could anyone call this adulthood, being grown up?

He feels it inside him again -life and time- welling up, pulsing. Feels the the sting and the bite of his open wounds. Feels his power rising under his skin, snapping around around him.

He can't do this anymore. There is no big question. No other other way about it. Maybe he'll die one way or another. Maybe the sky will stop being blue.

He wants to save the world, his family, everyone. But he's also prepared to do what it takes. It's an insignificant realization. It means everything.

He wants to wrap his hands around the clock and turn it back. Move the bladed hands of time to the beginning.

His heart is beating in his chest. Pulsing with the earth. Ticking off the seconds with the clock.

He can die. Hope could be a lie. But he can't deny anything anymore. It's the final. He can die. Hope could be a lie. But this may end it all.

Determination and desperation.

He closes his eyes. There's no guarantee. No certainly. Everything can shatter at the drop of a hat.

But. This is his story.

He can die. But everyone will die. And should he die, he wants to be able to remember that he did try.

This is his story. It's like trying to catch a meteor with his bare hands.

The world is below his feet and he's soaring over desert and aching inside. He can't breathe. He doesnt have time to stop.

There was never enough time.

He flies around the world at breakneck speed. Running, he thinks. Except there's nowhere to go. There hasn't been anywhere to go for years now.

Everything is so different. Nothing changes.

Just one more day.

He plummets down to the earth, free falling and still not breathing.

Just one more day, even though it could already be too late.

The sea is spanning out beneath him, huge and empty looking. Close, closer now. The surface a blackening mirror against the blood red line of the dying sun. He can smell the seasalt spray of the waters, the icy burn of the air, cutting across the bleeding scars on his cheeks.

He feels like he's being crushed asunder.

'Pick yourself back up.'

Didn't someone once tell him that?

'There aren't any heroes here. It's your job to prove that otherwise.'

The still ocean explodes upwards in a whirling crater. His eyes are open and his chest expands, breathing finally, suspended in the middle of the churning water.

And its heartbeat, life, and time again. It's the center of the universe. He's alone. He doesnt have to be.

He could die. Hope can be a lie.

It's exhilarating and sickening.

He can live. Hope could be real.

Everything is different. Nothing will stay the same forever.

It can't.

It won't.

Life is cruel with its kindnesses. Change is like that. It's a certainty.

He's streaking a long the sky once more, running on instincts and adrenaline and something so human it literally tears him apart. He touches down on the earth, shockwaves singing through his legs and keeps running. Footfalls thunderous and slowed in eternity in his mind.

There are no stars out tonight, but he's still guided by a flickering light. Close, closer now.

The door explodes inward at his hand.

Bulma is standing frozen and small and so old across the room. Her shock of blue hair streaked with what might be gray, harsh lines lining her mouth, forehead. He remembers a time when she didn't look so worn out, wasted and clinging the threads of her family and friends.

He wants to wrap his hands around the clock and turn it back. Move the bladed hands of time to the beginning.

Her eyes are the same however. Strong, intelligent, bright. Except maybe they aren't the same, completely. Her eyes are also harder than they'd ever been.

She looks up at him and he wonders if she can see the resignation beneath his flushed face.

She smiles, sad and proud, determined and desperate, and takes his hand. She leads him, and just for a bit, he follows.

The machine -the time machine- stands huge and foreboding and still under the shadows in the workshop. He presses his hand into its hull, where its heart could be. Where "Hope!" is written in a foreign hand.

'I'm coming, father.'


End file.
